Foy Dan Valentine: Helping Changed People Change the World

Foy Dan Valentine: Helping Changed People Change the World
By David Sapp, Second Ponce-de-Leon BC, Atlanta, GA

            Foy Dan Valentine was for twenty-seven years executive director of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the ethics agency of the nation’s largest non-Catholic denomination. During that time he served on two presidential commissions, he was identified by The Christian Century in 1975 as one of the twenty most innovative leaders in American Christianity; and he helped to move the SBC toward a greater ethical consciousness, particularly in the area of racial justice.

            In my years of knowing him, I have become convinced that the key to understanding the contributions of Valentine is that he was an activist, not a philosopher or an original scholar, although his scholarship was keen. He labored with relentless courage and unshakable conviction to move the world toward righteousness. Others theorized; others systematized; others wrote more prolifically; but no one contributed more toward changing the world.

            As a matter of fact, Valentine’s motto was “Helping Changed People Change the World.” He had it inscribed on small desk plates. He kept one on his desk for many years. He gave them to his staff as a reminder of the task they were about. After thirty years, I still have mine in prominent view on my own desk.

            I first heard the name Foy Valentine when he came to the campus of Mercer University to speak in the mid-1960s during my time as a student there. Several of my professors were so excited about his visit that it was obvious, even to this somewhat oblivious freshman, that he was a very different kind of denominational executive. The faculty’s admiration for Valentine was based strongly on their deep admiration for his courage and his insight, particularly on the race issue.

            I had just completed my final degree and was working on the staff at Southern Seminary, when one day a receptionist buzzed my and announced, “There’s a man named Valentine on the phone.” That phone call led to five years of employment at the Christian Life Commission, and it birthed a life-long friendship with the man who had so influenced me when he had spoken at Mercer a decade earlier.

            Over the next thirty years I was to know Foy Valentine as friend, colleague, and consummate advisor. He was, in the phrase of some forgotten way, both my mentor and my tormentor. I write as one who knew him well, but I cannot write as one who would critique his work with objectivity. Still, I believe I have learned in very special ways the immense contribution this man has made to the field of Christian ethics.

Forces That Shaped Him

            Every person is a product of the forces that come to bear upon him or her. Among other things, Valentine was a Texan, a child of the Depression, a Baptist, a Huguenot descendant, a family man, and a theologian.

            His roots grew deep in East Texas soil. Born on a farm in Edgewood, Texas, on July 2, 1923, the son of fiercely independent farmers Hardy and Josie Valentine, he grew up during the Great Depression, possessed an independent spirit, and possessed one of the most profound senses of self-discipline ever seen.

            Valentine was oriented to that place as well. He was shaped by its brand of hardscrabble living and by its fiercely independent spirit. His home county, often called the Free State of Van Zandt, was the site of an 1877 battle in which residents took their guns to a field to fight over which town would be the county seat.[1] Perhaps he was most profoundly shaped by his beloved Pleasant Union Baptist Church where, in his word, he “got a good case of religion” and where he was buried January 11, 2006.

            Perhaps a bit of that Van Zandt County independence arose from people who, like him, had French Huguenot ancestors. He was immensely proud of his Huguenot heritage, and that pride seemed somehow to result in his acquiring the same confident and defiant spirit that possessed those courageous French Protestants. He stood against racism, against immorality in general, and against fundamentalism in ways that would have made the Huguenots take pride in him.

            Valentine left Edgewood to go to Baylor University and his student career put him at the feet of several great teachers. He became fascinated with geology, developing a lifelong avocation of studying and collecting rocks. Among the most influential of his teachers was the Browning scholar A.J. Armstrong. Quotations from both Browning and Shakespeare colored his popular preaching and writing.

            One other teacher is worthy of special mention, although he was not a professor. Just after his graduation from Baylor in 1944, he spent a summer at Koinonia Farms with the famed Clarence Jordan. So at the youthful age of twenty-one, Valentine traveled to Georgia to work under Clarence’s tutelage. There he experienced first-hand a powerful model of interracial living. In Clarence Jordan, he found a kindred spirit, a preacher deeply rooted in scripture, and a Christian tenaciously committed to its radical teaching.

            The bond that formed that summer was strong. When he was ready to leave, Jordan gave him a signed, blank check, with instructions to fill it out and cash it whenever he had a need. Until his death, Valentine carried that check in his wallet, cherished but uncashed. He would visit Koinonia again in 2002 to participate in the fiftieth anniversary of its founding where he displayed the uncashed check as he recounted his experiences at the farm.[2]

            He hitchhiked from the farm back to Texas at the end of that summer to enter Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth. There he encountered his most revered teacher, T.B. Maston, professor of ethics. Valentine became one of Maston’s many doctoral students completing a Th.D. degree under his supervision. Valentine was also very much shaped by the family of his adulthood. His wife, Mary Louise, and their three daughters, Jean, Carol, and Susan, shared his convictions and stood by him in his fight against moral corruption. Mary Louise was his equal (she would say his superior) at Scrabble—and at life. Without doting, she constantly reinforced him in his public role.

Contributions to the Christian Life Commission, SBC

            Unlike most prophets, Valentine was an organization man. While he despised what the Southern Baptist Convention became after the fundamentalist takeover began in 1979, he worked as a Southern Baptist Convention insider for most of his life. He understood the danger of institutions and never gave them unquestioning loyalty, but he also understood their value and their power. He worked hard to harness that power for good and opposed abdicating it to evil.

            In 1960 Valentine was invited to become the executive secretary of the Christian Life Commission of the SBC, a role he would maintain for twenty-seven years. His arrival at the commission represented the convergence of two streams in Southern Baptist life.

            The first stream derived from the Social Service Commission, an agency that was established by the SBC as a small recognition of the relevance of the gospel to the culture around it.

            The Texas Christian Life Commission was born in 1950 and employed as its first executive director Dr. A.C. Miller. Miller had for the previous six years headed the Department of Interracial Cooperation for the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

            When the national Christian Life Commission (CLC) was born as the successor to the Social Service Commission, A.C. Miller was tapped to be its first executive secretary. With his appointment, the name was changed to “The Christian Life Commission,” and the confluence of the two streams was complete. The year was 1953. Southern Baptist ethics work had begun in earnest.

            Meanwhile, The Texas Christian Life Commission turned to Valentine as its second leader. He had served during 1949-1950 as a campus minister for colleges and universities in Houston, Texas, following his seminary graduation; was serving as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Gonzales, Texas; and moved to occupy the role of director of the growing commission. Again, Maston was influential in recruiting his doctoral graduate to this role where he served as chairman of the commission’s elected board.

            By 1960 Miller had retired from the commission, later to teach at Fruitland Bible Institute in North Carolina. Meanwhile, his young successor in Texas was tapped to head the SBC Christian Life Commission.

            Valentine was only in his mid-thirties when he went to the SBC commission’s helm. The CLC took a new turn under his leadership. He made it into an agency that was a model of effectiveness on the American religious scene. While a graduate student at Southern Seminary, I heard historian Martin Marty call the CLC “one of the most creative forces in American Christianity.” To the extent that this was true, it was largely because of the work of Foy Valentine. If it is true that an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, the CLC was his very large shadow.

            Under Valentine’s leadership, the commission fostered the formation of ethics departments in several of the Baptist State Conventions. These included such Baptist strongholds as Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia. These state ethics organizations were effective in standing against such negative social evils as gambling and alcoholism, and they fought strongly to strengthen families and apply the gospel in the arena of daily work.

            Under his leadership, the CLC raised the ethical consciousness of Baptists. Both he and the staff wrote prolifically for Baptist periodicals. Young Baptist leaders were cultivated for the cause. Valentine and the commission’s staff were quoted frequently in the national press, and they testified with regularity before Congress and presidential commissions. Wherever they could speak a word for righteousness, they did it.

            The nature of the CLC’s assignment placed it often in the center of controversy, but in spite of numerous motions made on the floor of the annual SBC, one of which (to Valentine’s amusement) called for the CLC “to be dissolved,” he did not regard most of them as serious threats.

            There was one serious threat to the commission’s existence prior to the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC in 1979. It occurred about midway through Valentine’s tenure when a group called “The Committee of Fifteen” threatened to recommend to the convention the elimination of the CLC. This move was serious because it was backed by a few very powerful Southern Baptist administrators. Ultimately, this effort failed, and the destruction of the commission was postponed until the fundamentalist movement ended it by transforming it into an instrument of the radical right.

            Administration for him was simply another way to advocate the cause of Christian ethics. His administrative style was so tough and direct that staff members sometimes found it uncomfortable to work for him. He watched their work carefully, and he watched they work style and their work habits, subjecting all who worked for him to the same rigorous standards he set for himself. While this style had some clear disadvantages, it served the CLC well in the long run. His careful surveillance of the work of the staff meant that he was their most ardent defender whenever they might come under attack. His toughness gave him the ability to take the heat when in the fiery furnace of moral debate and enabled him to stand firm against his enemies. As is so often the case, what appeared to some to be a flaw turned out to be a strength.

            Finally, the agency he built was lost. The political revolution of 1979 changed the SBC into something it had never been before. The CLC was given a new board of trustees populated by people with a different vision. Under direction from powerful fundamentalist leaders, they transformed Foy Valentine’s beloved commission into the ethics voice of the religious right. It is now the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the SBC.

            Some might say the corruption and dissolution of the CLC demonstrates the futility of investing one’s life in institutions. But the good that was done for the kingdom during the years of the CLC’s influence more than justifies Valentine’s investment. The achievement was bigger than the institution and outlives it. Furthermore, in the spirit of the prophets, once more a seed had been planted.

Contributions to Baptists

            Foy Valentine helped raise the ethical consciousness of a generation of Baptists. Through a variety of means, he was able to use the platform of the agency he headed to advance the cause of Christian ethics.

            As one of its principal activities, the CLC published tracts on moral issues. These tracts were published as series with titles such as “Issues and Answers” and the “The Bible Speaks,” and sought to give readers biblical food for thought and current information on which to base ethical judgments. These tracts were sometimes controversial, especially as seen by those who disagreed with their ethical perspective.

            The commission also conducted a National Seminar each year that featured many of the moral movers and shakers of the American culture as speakers. This meeting took on such importance that it was considered by many to be the most significant meeting in Baptist life. Not only did it become a forum where Baptist leaders were challenged to think about the great issues of the day, it was also a forum that nearly always made significant news, often on a national scale. Other conferences were held with regularity, some of them small regional conferences and some of them issue-oriented conferences.[3]

            The CLC also played an instrumental role in the SBC’s resolutions on moral issues. The convention had historically adopted resolutions, which ranged from those expressing thanks to the host city to those speaking on some particularly pressing issue. Valentine seized the opportunity to press the convention toward a more responsible voice. Resolution after resolution spoke to the pressing ethical needs of the day, and many of those resolutions had their origins in his mind.

            During my service on CLC staff, we often drafted resolutions for people who wanted to introduce them, and occasionally we introduced resolutions ourselves. He saw this as a part of the commission’s role in being the conscience of the convention.

            In recent years, however, some Baptists have called into question whether such resolutions, adopted by a group of people meeting in annual session, are a good idea. They are often the occasions for controversy, and some feel that they are so divisive that ethical perspective must be expressed by other means. Valentine never agreed with this perspective. He had much more in common with other outspoken ethicists, like Isaiah and Jeremiah. For him, righteousness was a cause to be championed. It was a reality to be fought for. It was a dream to be realized. The fact that debates over righteousness stirred deep passions only reinforced for him the conviction that evil was real and that it was splendidly and powerfully arrayed against the forces of God. In his view it needed bold champions, not timid sympathizers.

            Something of this contentious part of his character evidenced itself in retirement when he preached in a local church in Dallas. The pastor approached him afterward and said, “Dr. Valentine, I envy your retirement. It frees you to speak your mind.” He replied in a flash, “Oh, I didn’t wait on retirement. I’ve always done that.” Having been closely associated with him for many years, I can vouch for the accuracy of his self-perception.

            In the end, Valentine was committed to a cause, not to an institution. But unlike so many others, he understood that the cause must always find an institutional expression in order to be effective. He operated out of a sense of divine call, not out of a contractual obligation.

            In his retirement he made what may prove to be his most important contribution. He birthed the Baylor Center for Ethics, now thriving at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He also birthed Christian Ethics Today, a periodical devoted to the causes to which he gave his life. Even in his waning years, he was building for the cause that had consumed him first in Edgewood, Texas.

Contributions to the Larger Culture

            Valentine’s role at the CLC gave him a unique opportunity to contribute to the culture’s discussion of ethical issues. He made the most of the opportunity and quickly earned a reputation as one who did not always espouse popular views.

            Race. Valentine’s leadership on race began to emerge on the national scene as early as 1954. On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court of the United States handed down one of the most important decisions of American history. The decision, known ever after as Brown vs. Board of Education, struck down the separate but equal doctrine that had protected schools since the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision in 1896. Brown vs. Board of Education was obviously unpopular among white Southerners, but almost immediately three leaders of the SBC went to work to get the convention to support the decision. A.C. Miller of the Southern Baptist CLC, T.B. Maston of Southwestern Seminary, and J.B. Weatherspoon of Southern Seminary joined forces to act.

            Their lieutenants were a notable group of young leaders: Texas pastor Jimmy Allen, Texas CLC Director Foy Valentine, former Social Service Commission leader Hugh Brimm, and a host of others went to work. Their work was productive. In June 1954, just weeks after the decision was handed down, the SBC meeting in annual session in St. Louis, Missouri adopted a statement supportive of Brown vs. Board of Education. This action had great significance, but it has largely been forgotten by contemporary Baptists.

            Then in 1968, at the height of civil unrest in America, Valentine persuaded the SBC to adopt another statement, this one called: “A Statement Concerning the Crisis in Our Nation.” The statement contained a courageous confession. “As a nation we have allowed cultural patterns to persist that have deprived millions of black Americans, and other racial groups as well, of equality of recognition and opportunity in the areas of education, employment, citizenship, housing, and worship. Worse still, as a nation we have condoned prejudices that have damaged the personhood of blacks and whites alike.”

            These are but two examples of hundreds of efforts he made to move the culture toward justice. In addition to actions like these, Valentine tirelessly traveled, preached, and wrote promoting the cause. No doubt the platform his position gave him garnered attention that others would not have received, but his courage and eloquence commanded their own share of attention as well. Through it all, he contended for righteousness and gained a reputation for moving the white Baptists of the South into a new day.

            Separation of Church and State. Another issue Valentine considered to be of consuming importance was separation of church and state. During the earlier part of his career, Southern Baptists held true to the 400-year old Baptist commitment to church-state separation. Dallas First Baptist Church pastor George W. Truett gave a famous speech on the steps of the United States Capitol on this subject. Southern Baptist leaders like Atlanta pastor Louie Newton had been instrumental in forming Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State, now known more simply as Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Baptist commitment to this cause was unquestioned, just as it had always been.

            Then, late in Valentine’s career, a seismic change occurred. The emergence of the Christian Right marked the transition of evangelicals in general and Baptists in particular from a marginal minority to what some perceived as a “Moral Majority.” With increased political clout, many “Baptists” decided that the separation of church and state stood in the way of their access to power. What had always been a hallmark of Baptists suddenly became a hallmark of liberalism.

            Foy Valentine never moved. The SBC had assigned church-state separation to the Baptist Joint Committee for Public Affairs. The CLC never engaged the issue of church-state relations, but he was nevertheless an ardent defender of this time-honored Baptist principle. He wrote on the subject, and despite stinging criticism, he served several terms as president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

            The case he made was always the historic Baptist case: religious liberty can only be insured when church and state are separate. Our liberty is too precious to trade for a seat at the table of political power and too precious to abandon to the vagaries of Baptist public opinion.

            Abortion. The abortion debate was at its peak when Valentine retired from the CLC. While he was basically conservative on the issue, Valentine believed that abortion was in some circumstances the least available evil. He led the SBC in those years to adopt resolutions supportive of that position, and he signed a highly publicized statement in support of abortion rights, “Call to Concern,” circulated by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights in 1979. For this, he was roundly condemned by the religious right. As a matter of fact, one of the first actions the fundamentalists took after taking over the leadership of the commission was to replace its pamphlet “Issues and Answers: Abortion.”

            Valentine addressed nearly every other issue that arose, but his manner of addressing these issues is worth noting. One of his primary tools was his writing. A denominational leader has no pulpit, of course, but he does have a pen. He was a gifted writer and one of the few people I have ever known who could write a first draft in what I considered to be publishable form. (He disagreed with my assessment of his abilities.)

            He used his pen poignantly. Over the course of a career, he wrote thirteen books, a host of articles, a plethora of speeches, and many sermons. According to his sense of his own calling and identity, his books were not philosophical explorations, but practical applications of the gospel to life. In his writing, as in everything, he was content to leave philosophizing to others.

            Valentine was also a careful steward of public righteousness. He actually believed that testimony before congressional committees, quotes in newspapers and magazines, and public speeches made a difference. I believe Jeremiah would have agreed with him, as would Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Even Adolph Hitler, working for a very different cause, would have affirmed the power of a speech. Nevertheless, the moderate Baptist movement of today has many adherents who believe that this method of addressing issues is counterproductive. They choose rather to abandon the field of public discourse to the religious right. His life and ministry was based on a different perception.

            Of course, there is no substantive way to measure one person’s contribution to a conversation as large as the one in which he participated. One can only point to the fact that through the influence of Valentine and others, the nation’s attitude about race has changed. The legal protection of a woman’s right to choose is in place. Church-state separation has lost ground, but has not disappeared. His efforts were not in vain.

            I stood misty-eyed beside his grave January 10, 2006 as he was laid to rest. Pleasant Union Baptist Church served as a poignant backdrop. Yet even as we put his body in the ground, another issue of Christian Ethics Today was being prepared, dozens of those whom he influenced were continuing his cause, and God’s truth was, as always, marching on. Even as Foy Valentine now rests in peace, somewhere God is raising up another prophet, as yet unknown.

This article is reprinted by permission of Mercer University Press, 2008, from the book, Twentieth-Century Shapers of Baptist Social Ethics (Larry L. McSwain, Editor; Wm. Loyd Allen Historical Consultant). For a review of the book see that section in this issue.

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